The consistent buzz in the social media marketing world is overwhelming…the same message still resonates.

What is the message?

Are you anything without your audience? Does your audience crave good, I mean good lean content? Well give them what they want! Learn more about your audience and find relevant things to write about!!!

Three key components

Content is King and Engagement is Queen…so

Keep it simple (my motto!!)

Answer the Why, What, and How for your audience. There’s really no reason to make it more complicated than that.

Provide the good, the bad and the ugly!! (yep all three!!)

Be transparent in your content. Provide competitive differentiators and address the questions your customers really have, such as cost and value.

Always let your customers know that they are VIPs! (very important!!)

Provide great content on a consistent basis to grow your audience, but take it a step further and continue to engage with them to create lasting relationships.

Thank them for sharing your content, mention them in conversations, and reply when they ask questions. Keep it human; no one likes feeling like they’re talking to a robot!

Make yourself accessible too!

Your content should be easily digestible and relevant so that it can be shared across all of your channels. Make it easy for your customers to ask questions and engage with your brand, and consider creating a community where your audience can share their experiences with your brand and interact with each other.

Manage Your Reputation, Control Your Content

Your website is one piece of your online real estate…your presence which by the way is under your control!! Websites allow you and your team to become the primary authority on your business whether it is home based, small business, entrepreneurs or your dream startup!!

You can start using your website (you should really already be there) to establish a voice in the virtual world and share content that’s relevant to your business in a variety of ways:

Take preventative measures –These included carefully managing your social media account details, changing passwords, setting up a good quality social media monitoring tool, this is where an Online Retail Consultant can really assist!! It is crucial that companies engage and “make friends”. When things get a little hectic and chaotic, it’s great when your customers and contacts leap to your defense.

Remove the content – If you’ve posted something you didn’t mean to, you can remove it. If someone else posted something you don’t like, you could ask them to remove it. If it’s illegal you can take a more legal route – but if its “malicious” or “misleading”, it may also break the terms and conditions on Facebook, Twitter and other networks, so you can ask them to remove it for you.

Engage – If someone is maliciously posting negative comments about you, they may be a “troll” – Don’t respond to trolls. If the person has a genuine point and isn’t a troll, but you’re in the right – you should simply state the facts and make your case. If you’re in the wrong, you should apologize, grovel (a little) and offer to make amends. This is the part where you convert “haters” into “advocates” if you’re diplomatic and/or fortunate.

Bury it – Not what I’d usually advise, but if you’re faced with a negative blog post that’s appearing in search results, and all else fails, you can simply publish and optimize content for the same words that the negative content is ranking for (perhaps your company name) to push the bad story down the rankings. It’s remarkable how quickly you can do this if you put your mind to it.

Thank you for joining me! I will see you tomorrow! Always remember in this day and age things will continue to change. Be ready, be on board and more importantly…

Here at All This and That Internet and Web Solutions, we understand the power of the social web. We also understand how time-consuming it can be to build a social media presence. With our knowledge behind your business, we’ll cultivate a social media portfolio that will pay dividends in the form of loyal, connected customers.

The Internet is flooded with tons of websites, ads, information and much more. People are constantly using their devices and search engines to find that product, home, car, information, help… Well you name it, no limits. The search engines are re-thinking the way web sites are indexed and how the crawling process would perform. In the early stages key words and meta tags were the way to go to make sure your web site was indexed and ranked.